Ex-Dearborn resident killed in Beirut terrorist blast is mourned

Aug. 19, 2013

Written by

Detroit Free Press Staff Writer

A Canadian man who used to live in Dearborn is being mourned in metro Detroit’s Lebanese-American communities after he was killed in a terrorist attack in a Beirut suburb in Lebanon.

Hussein Ghamlouch, 52, who was in Beirut to get married to a woman there, was one of at least 27 people killed Thursday in the Rweiss district of Beirut in one of Lebanon’s deadliest bomb attacks in years.

Sunni extremists upset over Shias fighting in Syria for President Bashar Assad are suspected in the attack, which targeted a heavily Shi’ite area of Beirut that many in Dearborn have ties to. More than 300 were injured in the attack, according to the Associated Press.

Ghamlouch arrived on Tuesday and was killed two days later, said his sister Mahasen Saad, 49, of Dearborn. A memorial service is planned Saturday afternoon for Ghamlouch in a Dearborn mosque, the Islamic Institute of Knowledge. His death was widely mourned in Dearborn’s Shia community.

“I feel terrible that I lost my brother,” Saad told the Free Press Monday. “He was very generous, kind, quiet, very respectful.”

Ghamlouch was born in Lebanon and moved to Canada about 25 years ago. He lived in Windsor and Edmonton, where he had a travel agency. He moved to Dearborn about 10 years ago and lived there for about five years before moving back to Canada, according to family members.

He has four children from his first wife.

Ghamlouch’s future wife picked him up Tuesday at the airport in Beirut, according to a report on Al Jadeed, an Arabic-language TV station. She said he picked up his suit and she had picked up her dress. The day of the blast, they were planning to meet for a pre-wedding dinner.

When Ghamlouch didn’t show up, she thought maybe he was lost. Another family member went to search for him after hearing about the blast and recognized his body. The TV report showed the ring he had bought his fiancée.

“We’re all very saddened by it,” Doreen Swain, who works at Marlin Travel in Edmonton, which Ghamlouch owned for about four years, told the Free Press. “It was shocking.”

Swain said Ghamlouch last lived in Edmonton; his sister, Saad, said he was living in Windsor.

The explosion renewed fears in Lebanon that the civil war in Syria could spill over to Lebanon, which saw a brutal civil war of its own in 1975-90. Many Lebanese-Americans spent their summer vacations in Lebanon.

“It’s devastating that people could get killed in such a horrific tragedy while they’re on their summer vacation,” said Majed Moughni, a Dearborn attorney of Lebanese descent. “It’s just heartbreaking. He was as innocent as could be.”